Tag: beading

It would seem that my creativity has outstripped my blog writing! My original intent for this blog was to catalogue all the things I make to keep track of them as I wear out, sell or de-clutter. As it happened, that catalogue now spans accross this blog, Instagram, Ravelry and of course my Etsy store. Oh well.

Nonetheless, this blog is still where I want everything to end up. So if you follow me elsewhere, you may have already seen these, but they’re so pretty I’m sure you won’t mind seeing them again!

Gorgeous! I am so please with the results. Of course, it’s only triggered a new flow of ideas to try!

What’s more, I’ve decided I’ll be adding this one to my Etsy shop. There’s only so much handmade jewellery one girl can have – so it’s time to share the love and make some of my best creations available for sale.

It’s a wonderful feeling to be getting creative again! That means I pulled out my old beading tools… it has been a while indeed!

I find myself with a lot of time on my hands these days to heal and reflect, which is bittersweet as I’m often not one to have a lot of time on my hands on account of I like being busy. Call me a creature of habit, but I did just that – got myself busy.

That means I’ve finally got something to show you after months and months of silence! Oh how fickle life can be. Anyways, there’s a bonus this time… I’ve decided to actually sell some of my creations! Yep, every thing I’m showing off in this post: I made it and I’m selling it in my brand new Etsy store!

Enough of that, here’s the juicy bits: click on the pic to see the listing on Etsy.

I fell in love with these blue glass crystals and had to make something a bit fancy with them and some Swarovski crystals I already had…

Glass bead and crystal necklace with pearl Swarovski crystals

And then was obliged to make some coordinating earrings:

Vintage pearl and blue crystal earrings

I realised I hadn’t made much using gold yet, so I gave it a go and was quite pleased:

Glass bead and gold chain necklace

And this one I just wanted some matchy-matchy fun with copper findings and the copper sparkle in the glass beads. I made matching earrings for this one too! I will list those soon…

Copper glass bead necklace

Then I got stuck into the feathers. But the feathers, thankfully, did not get stuck on me.

I am well an truly in love with crochet. I can see it’s going to be in my life for many years to come. And now I have real-life friends who also crochet and internet friends who share inspiration, I’ve got so much creative crochet goodness to go round.

And so I was pondering the crafty shops around my workplace recently. I thought, you know, paper clips are cool and all, but I think it’s time to graduate to stunningly beautiful stitch markers (though I think paper clip stitch markers are here to stay too!). I took myself over to the bead shop.

Now when I was researching this little project I found that there is actually a difference between crochet stitch markers and knitting stitch markers. Knit markers don’t have to be removable, but crochet markers MUST be removable, lest they live forever in your finished project. Well, lateral thinking solves all kinds of problems.

I found a box in my cupboard on the weekend, and thinking it contained some wool I started going through it. Well, it did contain some wool, but it also had some fabric pieces and another jar of beads from my great grandmother!

This was a happy discovery. Now I have two little old jars (read about the other here) with something to try, this may help me hurry up and get back to beading!

This one contains mostly clear seed beads with the old metal looking one.

It also has some plastic beads and some of my great grandmother’s WIPs in it..

And a glass button! I can just see this acting as a clasp on a necklace. Finally, here are Nana’s pieces she had worked on:

or Morganisation: My Beading/Jewellery Making Stash Part 2

Sweetheart and I recently treated ourselves to a trip to Sydney, Australia.

There is something about cities that stir something in me. Sometimes I try to capture it, but I’m often not sure I succeed… This is my latest attempt at photography, what do you think? 🙂

On an slightly unrelated note, we (I) stumbled across a closing down sale at a bead store – I ended up stocking up on a few things! It’s terrible going into shops like this without a project in mind, apparently I was wandering around in this tiny shop for about 45 minutes before Sweetheart urged me on! It’s like grocery shopping on an empty stomach!

In my Sewing Stash post, I gave a not very revealing sneak peak into my beading stash. And today I continue the illusion that my junk piles are actually worth reading about by offering the preview of the current state of my work-in-progress tray:

Ah yes, other people’s mess. The glorious thing about the internet is if you’re not interested, somebody else is, and this is wonderful news for people who like to ramble and wonder out loud like me.

Some of my work-in-progress tray is stuff from sewing mending jobs Sweetheart threw on there when he cleaned up the lounge room. There are in fact three projects here: One plastic pearl and Swarovski crystal stitching experiment hiding under the paper bag, and two necklace re-fashion jobs I need to start. Both the necklaces were given as gifts to a people and that people has asked me to turn them into something she would actually wear.

And idea I have, alas, at the moment time I do not. So they sit in the tray untill the time comes I can put a few consecutive hours together. Which will hopefully be this week.

↑ I remember the creative process on this one, I was feeling Goth-y, and I liked the big bead. So I made the top bar. Then I just kept putting matching things together until I had something I liked! I had a lot of fun with this piece but I do recall it taking a longer time that most of my others 🙂

↑ Another favorite!! The charm was actually from an older pair of favourite earrings, you can see the black coating has started to come off in parts. The earring hooks were in a much worse state, and while I could have just replaced them, it was more fun to create something new. I still have the other earring, it’s waiting in my bead box for the right moment!